Chapter 39
In which Lou sees something new, but misses something significant.
Lou opened the door and saw Tomoko, her back to him, pulling on a rope that seemed to stretch up the hallway. Except there was no rope.
“Hey, guys.”
Nobody looked up from a newspaper. “Good morning, sir.”
Tomoko turned around and revealed her face coated in white. She wore black tights and a tight T-shirt with horizontal yellow stripes. Tomoko gave Lou a staccato wave, then went back to pulling her imaginary rope.
“What’s with the mime routine?”
“She’s practicing for the circus.”
“Okay. Makes sense, I guess. Has she done mime before?”
“I don’t know,” replied Nobody. “She won’t say.”
“Right. May I ask what brought this on?”
“From what I can tell, she met a mime at Sunday Market. She might have a date with him.”
“She’s not sure?”
“Well, they haven’t spoken yet.”
“Of course.” Lou sat down and watched Tomoko. “Speaking of dates, I guess I have one with Jax.”
Tomoko dropped her rope and leaned way over toward Lou, one hand cupped around an ear. Nobody set the newspaper down. “So, you’re not sure either?”
“I’m not sure if it counts as a date. Maybe we’re just hanging out.”
Tomoko put two thumbs up and gave Lou an exaggerated grin.
“Good for you, Lou. Call it a date. What do you have planned?”
“She wants to see some exhibit at the U of O Museum of Art. So we’ll hang out there for a while. I mean, have our date there.”
It was a fine day for nooning at the art museum. The rising mid-summer heat and an exhibit of Renaissance drawings and prints were two good reasons to be inside the cool, quiet building. Jax was excited about seeing original pieces by the master Albrecht Dürer. She led Lou on the easy walk from her house, talking the whole time about Dürer and his contemporaries. Lou was content just to be with Jax. He needn’t say anything.
Upon entering the elegant—some called it eclectic—brick building, Jax led Lou straight to the Gnagy Gallery. A smattering of visitors wandered, paused, sometimes contemplated at the exhibition. Jax looked about the room, then approached a small engraving, no larger than the size of her hand.
“Look at this one, Louie. It’s called Sol Justitiae, or Sun of Righteousness. Albrecht Dürer did this one in 1499.”
Lou stepped closer to the piece on the wall. He saw the image of a man sitting on a lion while holding up a sword and a balance. Rays of energy seemed to burst from his head. “What am I looking at here?”
“It’s a print from an engraving. His technique is amazing. Check out the shading and shadows, and the folds in the guy’s cloak. And look at the muscles and fur on that lion. It’s basically an illusion. It’s all done with thousands of tiny lines scratched into a metal plate. He was so good at so many things. No one else could match him.”
They moved along the wall, viewing woodcuts and engravings by contemporaries of Dürer and by later artists. Jax lingered at these, sometimes going back to a previous piece for comparison. Lou took less time at each succeeding work. He appreciated the careful craftsmanship involved, and he liked the portraits and the pictures of animals, but the religious symbolism of many works was lost on him. He drifted about the gallery until a display in a side alcove caught his eye.
Jax studied other prints on display. She saw beyond the craft of each work. There were portraits that conveyed more than the precise lines and shading of the subject’s face. She could catch a glimpse into one’s state of mind, or sense an unspoken feeling. Was it that of the subject, or of the artist? Jax pondered the question, not noticing the shift in her own mood.
Jax was steps away from an emotional maelstrom.
Lou stepped into the alcove. A glass case on a table enclosed a small replica of Gutenberg’s printing press. Lou moved in for a better look. He saw that a sturdy wooden structure held a pressing mechanism, which seemed to involve pulling a long handle attached to a thick screw-like component. Beneath that an extended platform supported a frame, and the frame held a series of metal pieces. Those pieces were the elements of type, a tiny raised letter on each one.
Jax stood before an engraving of an eighteen-year-old woman peering back at her. The piece, based closely on of one of Dürer’s paintings, was from a seventeenth century artist named Wenceslaus Hollar. What was the woman feeling as she posed by that open window, hair up, her wrists crossed on a table before her? Jax went into the woman’s gaze and found someone at once trapped, ignored, glum, even morose. Was there no joy in the subject’s life? As Jax felt it, no, there was not.
Lou read the panels detailing the history and importance of the Gutenberg printing press. How it provided for the mass production, and thus lower cost, of printed materials. How it led to a wave of knowledge and ideas, and with that a rise in literacy. Other panels described Gutenberg’s related inventions necessary for the press to succeed. These included a method for creating movable metal type and an oil-based ink that would transfer well from the type to sheets of paper. Lou was impressed by the genius of Johannes Gutenberg. If it weren’t for this guy’s tinkering five hundred years ago, I wouldn’t be fixing typewriters today.
Jax pulled away from the engraving of the young woman with her hair up. The sadness of the piece clung to her. She ambled past a few more works, head down, crossing the floor in silence. Jax’s thoughts turned away from the artistic merit around her and dwelled on the sullen woman in the engraving. Why was she trapped in that house? What did she do wrong? Who would come to help her? Jax was steps away from an emotional maelstrom.
One side of the Gutenberg printing press display had a monitor with a green button. Lou pressed it, and a short film started up. The title was simply “Gutenberg’s Printing Press.” The film alternated descriptive text with an enactment of a man going through the steps. The man began by smearing black ink onto two ball-shaped pads. He then rubbed the leather pads together to smooth out the ink. Lou watched the process in fascination. The man pressed the pads repeatedly onto the surface of movable type, getting it ready to print.
Jax stopped at the last piece in the exhibit. She looked up and saw another engraving by Dürer. Pictures of this work were in several of her art books. Here it was in front of her, no larger than a sheet of looseleaf paper. It’s title, Melencolia I. Regardless of the centuries of analysis and interpretation prompted by this famous work, Jax had her own, deeply personal reaction. She lost all sense of the space around her and stood, unmoving, seized by the image of a figure sitting in the shadows, a flightless angel.
Lou focused on the film, absorbed by the printing process and learning new words. The man in the film placed a sheet of dampened paper onto a tympan, held it in place with a frisket, and then lowered the assembly onto the metal type. All of this fit into a wooden frame called a coffin. The whole thing rested on a carriage, which the man in the film rolled underneath the press. Finally, the man pulled against a long lever. This turned a heavy screw which brought a platen down onto the paper. Ah, a platen. Here was one word, at least, that Lou already knew.
More than anything, Jax saw herself in the brooding angel before her. The figure’s face, nearly obscured by shadow, held a vestige of light in her eyes. They gazed out of the scene, as to a distant horizon, an escape from her current lot. If only those wings could lift her, carry her away. But this angel was grounded, weighed down by keys to nowhere and a purse of heavy coins. Jax felt a hovering gloom settle upon her. She crossed her arms and shivered.
Strewn about the angel were unused, frustrating tools of mathematics and construction, objects beyond her ken, fixing nothing. Where were the tools and objects of music? Of art? Why was she held to this lonely, joyless place? Jax stared at other symbols in the piece, unable to pull away. She perceived the hourglass as stuck in time, its sand frozen between past and future. A bell hung limp and silent. A tired dog, curled at her feet, offered nothing. A seated cherub mirrored the angel, flightless and confounded. Was this her young self? Had she not progressed at all? In the background, a comet streaked across the sky. Jax covered her mouth to stifle a sob as its bright light passed her by.
The man in the film raised the platen, rolled the carriage out, and lifted the frisket, tympan, and paper. He held up a beautiful imprint of the arranged type. Lou was impressed by the boldness and clarity of the printing. He circled the enclosed replica of the printing press once more, this time with a greater appreciation of the invention and its workings. Gutenberg didn’t only make history, he made it possible to disseminate the knowledge of history. In short, his genius changed the world.
Lou left the alcove and entered the main gallery of the exhibit, excited to show Jax what he had seen. He had lost track of time and, when he didn’t see Jax right away, assumed that she had gone through to the next gallery. He looked for her there. And in the gallery after that. And he waited outside the bathrooms in case she showed up there.
It was no use. Jax was gone.